I\u2019ve been talking a lot about deep practice<\/a> and dark practice<\/a> lately. One of the points I keep making over and over again is that these things aren\u2019t for everyone. That\u2019s OK \u2013 there\u2019s a place in our many Pagan and polytheist religions for people at all levels of interest and commitment. Not everyone has to be a priest or a mystic or a magician. Our communities also need people who are accountants and engineers.<\/p>\n Some people simply aren\u2019t interested in deep practice. Some are committed to a worldview that does not allow for things like Gods, spirits, and fae. Some are at the very early stages of their Pagan practice and aren\u2019t yet ready for deeper practice. If you\u2019re in one of those groups, this post isn\u2019t about you.<\/p>\n This post is for those who feel the call to deeper and darker practices, but who are afraid of them. It\u2019s for those who\u2019ve experienced something that was more real than they expected and now are leery of continuing.<\/p>\n And it\u2019s also for those who are rushing into dealings with spiritual beings with all the caution of a college student leaving a party with a blood alcohol content of 0.15 and insisting he can drive himself home just fine.<\/p>\n Fear isn\u2019t always a bad thing. Humans have an innate fear of snakes \u2013 so do other primates<\/a>. That helps us avoid dying painful deaths after being bitten by a venomous snake. Problems arise when reasonable fears become unreasonable\u2026 and when reasonable fears cannot be avoided.<\/p>\n